The Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has pledged a five-year jail sentence for online trolls. According to the proposed laws, online trolls will be jailed and the social media giants such as Facebook will be forced to reveal the number of complaints and the action taken on them regarding abusive content and abuse.
With less than two weeks from the polling day, the Australian PM said that “trolls have no place in Australia.”
Currently, abusers or trollers harassing people through social media services such as Facebook or Twitter face a maximum jail time of three years. The coalition also wants popular games such as Fortnite to enable the most restrictive privacy and safety settings by default to shield young gamers from “abuse and harm”.
Nearly 80% of the youngsters aged 8 to 17 years are said to be engaged in online games each year. In such cases, the tech sector may be ultimately forced into changing the default security settings to maximum privacy and security for online apps and video games.
According to this new law, social media giants will be asked to reveal the number of complaints received on abusive content and the action taken on them. The government hopes that such transparency will help them decrease social media abuse as the companies will be forced into responding immediately.
These proposed laws and changes will be included in the ‘Online Safety Act.’ This single piece of legislation will make it easier for future governments to amend laws when technology advances. This new measure will be voluntary at first, however, the Morrison government may not stop from forcing the gaming sector to implement the changes.
It is interesting to note that these changes were declared after the Morrison Government faced a pretty bad week where three candidates were dumped because of their online posts. If Morrison’s Government is re-elected, Mr. Morrison will discuss the proposed law and the changes for the internet users at the G20 leaders summit in Tokyo in June.
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